Castle
by one hundred zeros
Summary: They have been playing this game for eternity, in this world drenched by blood like a twisted fall of rain. Until they die, he cannot live, and until he lives, they cannot die. This is their existence. Ad infinitum.


**A/N: My first (and possibly only) Maple Story fic. Dedicated to my senpai Absol Master, whose writing I admire greatly and can never seem to follow.**

**Disclaimer: Maple Story does not belong to me. All recognizable scenes and characters are coincidence. No copyright infringement intended.**

**Castle**

:::

_I am the darkness that traces the light._

He sits on his throne of bones, shrouded by night and beneath an eternally twilit sky. He does not know how long he has lived, or how many centuries has passed, except that it has been a long, long time.

His world is black and grey and muted colors, like faded paintings or monochrome, or dust collected on a high shelf and never swept away.

He has grown tired of this uniformity. Of the endless killing and the blood which falls like rain from the sky and drenches this darkness in vivid crimson like a twisted pattern stained on the marble ground.

To kill to live. Or was it to live to kill? He does not quite remember.

This is all he has ever known, this eternal game of chess. Sacrificing the rooks, advancing the pawn, raising the knight. Castle.

He has never won the player on the other side of infinity. And he has never lost. But he has long tired of this game, and he no longer wishes to play.

:::

_I am the light that stitches the darkness._

He is resplendent on his throne in the halls of white marble and gold, whose ivory walls are still as pure, though not as untainted, as the day when they were first made despite the many eternities which he has lived.

All he has ever known is this light. In a world without shadows no matter how the sky is always bathed in dawn, the brightness of it all blinds him.

He has forgotten how to see in this stark, sterile whiteness, painted red by blood and the eternal sunrise, and his eyes have been dyed the same vermilion as his palace of pale pillars and high ceilings and clear windows.

Even if he cannot see, he wishes for brief reprieve from this game that has been going on for eternity.

If he does not win, can he lose? Can he tip over the chess-board so that all the pieces fall and scatter across the floor, so that even if they both wander off from this black and white path, neither of them will win?

:::

_Sin_

We are the misled angels, who fell an eternity from heaven -- drawn by the temptation of forever.

:::

_Eden of Hell_

Like flower petals trodden underfoot we lost ourselves amongst paths of carved abysses, of sins and lies and redemption.

:::

_Negative Infinity_

His hair is violet in the light, the color of a prince and the enticement of the Devil.

He sits in summer colored gardens, beneath trees the shade of green and emerald and jade, and he plays a requiem of sweet tunes and music. Like the flutes of heavenly choirs praising the Lord was his twisted and haunting aria, yet his eyes reflect the tempest of darkness and temptation.

:::

_I am the Zero that mirrors the dark and the light._

His existence is to divide eternity. That is all he ever will be.

Within the monochrome colored universe, his arms are bound by chains made of shadow and brilliance. His mind is shrouded in twilight and in radiance which plays over each other like ripples across a pond, and his soul has been torn into fragments of day and night.

All he as ever known was the twisted, crushed truth that drowns within the echoing silence of lies and tries so hard to live. All he has ever known was this never-ending nightmare.

He is the pawn. He is the King. In his infinitesimal importance, he is useless.

:::

_Other edge of Infinity._

His hair is the color of silver, of moonlight on ripples spreading across water, of the whiteness of a heron's wings as it takes flight off the stillness of the lake.

He wonders, somedays, if he could still dream. If he could still love. If he was still living and breathing, or if he was nothing more than a chess-piece drained of his usefulness and tossed away.

This existence, had it ever been his own?

Eyes tainted a blood-red vermillion, he looks down upon his garden of crystal trees which reflect the light through their clear branches, the shining brilliance crossing themselves and growing ever brighter.

He does not see this. Nor does he see the darkness.

He is calm like the quiet before the storm.

:::

_Moment of Interlude_

"Let's play a game of chess," you say, and so we set up the board and the pieces with the pawns and the rooks and the bishops and knights, and our servant stands by the side to keep the score.

We play.

Pawns moving two steps, or maybe one; and the bishop traverses the white squares to conquer the knight; the rooks sacrifice themselves; and queen travels everywhere through her monochromatic land, and you said,

"Why is the King so weak?"

He only moves one step at a time.

:::

_Darkness_

He had never wanted to become the King in this twisted game, to become the weak and the useless who needed protection. He might have chosen -- if he had the choice -- to be the Queen who goes where she will, or the rook who reaches his destination in straight lines, or even the bishop with his tilted path.

The King in his place was useless, and his golden eyes glitter with derision at the chess board set before him.

The King.

He knocks it over with a flick of his fingers and he watches the black piece fall and shatter.

:::

_Keeping Score_

"No one won again today." My Lords.

:::

_Conspiracy of the Supernovae_

Like two sides of a falling coin, light and darkness were never meant to touch. Never together, yet never apart.

In this fragile existence created to destroy the other side of themselves, he was the mirror and the zero. The monochromatic divide.

And until the shadow learns that it needs the light to live, and until the light learns that it needs the shadow to see, he who breaks the line called infinity -- cannot die.

That was all he ever wanted.

:::

_Break_

He knows his weakness. With all his power and his importance, he is nothing. A king in his gilded throne with strings attached to the back of his hands and his feet. He moves as the game wills him to move, he lives as the game wills him to live.

He cannot die. He cannot win, so what is all this blood? Why was there death if no one can die, why was there killing if no one can live? If all that he sees is red and crimson and a hundred shades of vermillion, he does not need to destroy to see any more.

Pale fingers flit across black and white tiles, and because he cannot see, his fingers brush against a single piece, and although he could not see, the White King is knocked over onto his side.

:::

_I will end this game even if it took forever._

"It is dinner time, my Lords -- time to stop the game."

The silver haired boy looks up and nods, beginning to keep the pieces, saying calmly, "It is the ninety-ninth stalemate on the ninety-ninth day."

And his violet haired brother smiles from opposite the marble table.

"Let's play again, tomorrow, no? -- and then we'll make a hundred."

:::

_E5, F6. En passant._

Like thunderclouds that hide the overcast sky, whose crossing paths bring impassioned rain...

Like the temptation of hell in the Eden of heaven...

Like angels whose wings are made of black despair... who fly as they fall through silent air.

:::

_The slanted step of ever._

They have not looked upon the other's face for ten thousand eternities and one, but even if both pretend, they never forgot.

:::

_Come with me, My Lord, my friend._

He spoke the words that will (never) end the game.

He is the serpent of temptation.

:::

_Violet_

"I have killed you before."

:::

_Silver_

"So have I."

:::

_Orbit -- ad infinitum_

"I will kill you again."

:::

_Blind_

Arms, flung out to form a cross. Sacred and tainted in the dark and light.

He watches as they fight. As long as they fight, he lives, as long as he lives, they fight. He is the King, and until the King dies, the lowly pawn can never stop fighting; until the lowly pawns stop fighting, the King can never die.

:::

_Tempest of Blood_

He is the devil that plays the tune and pulls the string. He is the God that created Genesis.

He is the servant, he is the King.

Until he dies, they know they cannot live.

Until they live, he cannot die.

:::

_Promote_

Even a fool is not always blind, and the queen was once a pawn.

:::

_Advancement of the parabola_

Their swords plunge into him, twin blades of light and darkness, and he who is the heart of shadow is torn apart by the wind of bladed truths.

:::

_Negative. Infinity. Meets. Zero_

He knew this day will come -- when the knot within the thread called fate is finally disentangled, only to find that it has always been two halves and never one.

:::

_Eternity. Becomes. A. Second._

There are people whose smiles could heal the world. There are people whose smiles could shatter it.

Sometimes, they are both.

:::

_Fall._

In a certain part deep within, they have always known that this will happen.

Light and darkness were never meant to be apart -- never meant to kill each other. In this game which they have been playing for a hundred hundred decades, they have realized that they have never been playing against each other.

The Zero that tears them apart and yet brings them together.

:::

_Uncreating Genesis_

When he dies his soul is broken, and his mind is freed from the chains which has bound him for all eternity and shackled him to his throne made of shadows and brilliance.

The mocking crown that sits upon his head and digs blood-covered thorns into his chestnut hair -- he can finally throw it away.

Away. All away.

:::

_Twisted Victory_

They wonder if it was he or them who have lost. If in their victory, they have died and finally reached the dark gates of the endless abyss (Or was it just another translation of Elysium?), wrought of truth and lies incandescent by the half-light of their tears.

Ten thousand eternities and one.

:::

_Forever._

Is a promise.

:::

_Epilogue of an Interlude_

"This is your 100th draw, my Lords." The servant bows as he speaks those words, and the two boys -- one with silver hair and the other violet, turns their faces toward the sky.

He cannot tell what they are thinking.

:::

_Stalemate_

101

:::

_Let's sing a song, and sing it again,_

_For ever and ever tonight_

_Until the moon can shine on our twisted souls,_

_And bring to light our sins_

_Let's sing the requiem that you had wrote,_

_Under the summer-colored trees_

:::

_End_

**A/N: What a convoluted, twisted story that doesn't make any sense. The basic plot runs thus:**

**There are two brothers who play chess and whose servant helps them keep score. Later on, the one with violet hair and yellow eyes became the Lord of Darkness and the one with silver hair and red eyes and who is blind became the Lord of Light.**

**After fighting for eternity like a game of chess, they used to think that they were like the Kings in the game of chess, but finally realize that their enemy was never each other but the existence which divides them -- the servant who had used to keep score when they were young, who is also the King that has to be conquered in order to 'win' the game.**

**They kill him in the end, but even then, they still have doubts if they have really won, or if this has been the Divide's plan from the start.**

**I hope you liked the story. I don't usually write such abstract stuff -- it never turns out well and it is never really quite popular. Many thanks, once again, to Absol Master who inspired this with her story 'Another Axis'.**

**MoonMyst**


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